


i’m not insane, just irrational (but isn’t that the same)

by bananasarehellagay, PsychicBananaSplit



Series: broken and whole, parts and pieces [2]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Body Dysphoria, Canonical Character Death, Child Neglect, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Gen, Older Sibling Wilbur Soot, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Resurrection, Sad Wilbur Soot, Supernatural Elements, Touch-Starved, Wilbur Soot Angst, Wilbur Soot-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29743524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bananasarehellagay/pseuds/bananasarehellagay, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychicBananaSplit/pseuds/PsychicBananaSplit
Summary: In which the one thing Wilbur desperately needs - and, subsequently, the one thing that he can’t have - is the warmth of another person.aka: resurrected wilbur only feels cold.
Relationships: Ranboo & Technoblade & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Series: broken and whole, parts and pieces [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165301
Comments: 5
Kudos: 148





	1. i thought i couldn’t love anymore

**Author's Note:**

> wiblur soto angst for yall :)))))

He didn’t really know what to expect.

The day that he would eventually come back had haunted him since Tommy hinted at it - or, rather said it quite plainly. In the days that followed, he spent his time wandering the Unliving and the Inbetween with Ghostbur. (As much as he hates to admit it, and to admit anything, he will miss the ghost when they’re gone. The two of them can’t exist in the same plane for long, anyway. All good things must come to an end, and Ghostbur was ready to move on. He’s always been a selfish person, and he thinks he doesn’t want them to go because  _ he  _ doesn’t want to  _ come back.) _

Wilbur’s heard the news, of course, spending the few days in the Inbetween he had eavesdropping -  _ he’s going to come back,  _ and he will not have a choice. It feels like a trap, it feels like a box. Philza and Tommy are alike, too alike, in the way that both make their decisions and follow them through stubbornly, regardless of the people that those choices effect along the way, regardless of consequences, regardless of even their own wellbeing. That treatment is always a means to an end. 

At least Tommy could open his fucking eyes and see it before it went too far. 

(Phil never knew when to stop.)

Being a ghost (not quite a ghost - if he were a ghost, he would be like Ghostbur, and he wasn’t like them, not in the slightest) had its perks like that. Like eavesdropping. Wilbur can’t say he was entirely prepared for his resurrection, but the knowing made it easier. (If easier was in the pit in his stomach dropping every time he realized, the anxiety choking him with every breath, easier as in dread pooling in every limb of his cold, dead,  _ gone and should stay that way  _ body, then yes. Easier.)

So he didn’t really know what to expect. And the idea would’ve made him laugh - he’s  _ Wilbur Soot.  _ But even with all his achievements, the grandstanding and the performance, he couldn’t have expected anything from resurrection. It had simply never happened before.

He didn’t know what to expect, but out of all things, it certainly wasn’t  _ pain. _

Pain, excruciating, devastating, curling up his spine and  _ pulling,  _ gripping at the roots of his hair and  _ tearing,  _ digging into his skin and his flesh and his bones and  _ scratching.  _ Being summoned back into his physical form was such a long and painful process that when it was over he didn’t know what time it was, concepts like up and down had left him, any speech beyond screaming his lungs out was foreign. He remembers respawning (throwing his first three lives away) and the uneasy, uncomfortable, maybe even unsettling feeling of coming back into his own body. The way it would always feel like he was covered in glue and paper, like he was a craft project and not a man - but this was nothing,  _ absolutely nothing like that. _

And it didn’t stop. Wilbur recalls the moment that he realized he was back, the moment the pain went from burning, being set on fire and then dunked into the banks of the arctic, to raw nerves grating against sandstone. His skin was too sensitive, his clothing felt like razors and the chilled stone he was lying on was suddenly freezing him to his core. He struggled to breathe, struggled to remember that he  _ had  _ to breathe. The first gasp was dry and filled with ash, cold, biting at his tongue and down his throat, and the coughing that followed made that disgusting hurt last even longer. The leveled breathing comes slow and shallow.

One.

_ Two.  _

He hears something, a distant drone somewhere behind him, something like a voice. He can barely hear it over the roaring of blood rushing behind his ears. The lights are too bright for his new eyes to handle, so they’re closed. Moving hurts, sending alarms straight to his mind, like tiny stabs of pins and needles tracing his skin. His head throbs with a migraine’s invitation, following the beating-

-the beating of his  _ heart,  _ he can feel it,  _ he can feel it.  _

Inhales three, four, five, six, are the ones that even out his system, calming him down, less shallow with each passing moment. The rushing behind his ears dies down, revealing the voices, definitely voices beside him. Seven, eight, and nine are deep, lung-filled. His nerves adjust so not everything hurts, but he can still feel and count every single thread in the clothes he’s wearing. His eyes stop stinging from the lights.  _ “Oh gods, he’s breathing,”  _ he can hear, and the familiar voice echoes and echoes and echoes.

He’s hit his tenth new breath, reaching for the bottom of the well in his chest, searching for his bravery (He wasn’t even sure it was there anymore - maybe it left when he was exiled, maybe it left when he died, maybe it left when Ghostbur gave him the cold, hard truth of it all in a sea of liquid blue, streaming down their face, crying, crying, crying.)

He inhales-

-and he exhales. He opens his eyes.

Wilbur is alive, his heart is beating, his skin is thrumming with energy.

The wet cobblestone, covered in moss and vines, stares back down at him. Past the ash and cold air, he can smell the fresh growth of spring in the walls, in the atmosphere. (He never knew the taste of it could be so sweet, melting snow and apple blossoms. He finds it ironic that it took dying for him to recognize life’s beauty.)

He drinks it all in like a starving man, breathing through his gaping mouth like he’s drowning in it all. His hands search for something to hold on to, and they find the seams of his jacket, gripping to the fabric’s edge like a lifeline. His wrists shake furiously with his white-knuckled grasp. It’s everything and nothing, overwhelming and yet underwhelming at the same time.

“Wilbur?”

It was a whisper, barely a wisp of sound, and there was no indication that it existed at all until fingers wrap their way around his tensed arm, and he’s so shocked that he can’t make a human sound. He lurches away from the touch, his skin prickling from the contact, but his sudden movement sends him off the stone and onto more stone, just not at the same elevation. His back is the first to slam into the ground, knocking his new breath out of him. Wilbur gasps and wheezes back for the control over his fragile lungs, and the hands reaching out to help him don’t do anything to  _ actually  _ help. 

“Stay- stay back,” he warbles, voice broken and croaky from neglect. He rolls over on his hands and knees, both feeling like they were scrapped across pavement, or had splinters digging deep into their calluses. His chest, right below his sternum, hurts with a distant intangible ache. His back, however, has bruising building up around the entire surface area, and the uncovered places of his limbs feel like they’ve been singed with a branding iron. 

Getting up to his feet seemed to take more effort than falling down had. They shake beneath him and he sacrifices a bit of his pride, but he manages to stand. He leans against a wall to wait for the world to stop spinning, to get a clear look at his surroundings. (His core instincts have never left him, it seems - steady yourself and assess the situation. Level-headedness came in handy for war, and even more in politics. It also comes in handy for when you get resurrected against your will.)

It was a chamber that Wilbur was in, built out of metal and stone. It had obviously been a long time since anyone used the place, weeds growing out of the floor and ivy crawling up the walls. Pools of shining water are gathered around the altar in the center, what he woke up on. Upon closer inspection, glowstone was placed under the floors to give the water that effect. Ancient sigils were carved into the bricks, some that he knows, and some that he’s completely unfamiliar with. 

He’s cornered by Philza, who seems a lot smaller since they last saw each other - his robe and his wings, fractured and useless, almost swallow him whole. He’s not wearing sandals, which are replaced by sturdy boots for the snowy, mountainous tundra. He’s cloaked in furs and wool for the biting cold. The avian is followed closely by Technoblade, who looms over his short figure, and Ranboo, who’s taller than both of them. The boy looks painfully confused - Wilbur doesn’t remember seeing him around before his untimely death, which would explain his cluelessness and the vague realization.

Tommy and Tubbo stare at him with something indescribable in their eyes, but he can’t take the time to decipher it. They both look so adult, yet so small at the same time. It almost feels like yesterday that Phil had brought Tubbo home, away from his box on the street, and Tommy was just a spitfire soldier ready to take on the world.

(It almost feels like yesterday that Phil had left him with the two children after a week, maybe less. Not even toddlers yet, Tommy and Tubbo, and Wilbur crying himself to sleep because they called him  _ Dad.  _ He was only nine years old.  _ He was only nine years old.) _

Sam is at their side with a pained look on his face, but Wilbur can’t pay attention to anything else when Dream himself is sitting at the head of the altar. It’s now, when he’s weak and shaking, that he finds his bravery in the eyes of the monster.

He’s not wearing his mask.

The bastard  _ stares  _ at him, with green eyes full of malice, through an overgrown curtain of dirty blond hair and a scar splitting his face in half. His hands are chained together in front of him, and so are his legs. 

Wilbur wants to punch him. (He wants to kill him. Find a knife and stab him, let him bleed out dry on the floor. He wants to break his fingers one by one, leave papercuts along his skin and pour saltwater into the wounds, lemon juice in his eyes. He wants to tie him up in a tomb and shut him in with concrete, let him rot. He supposes that imprisonment wasn’t a really creative idea, given the circumstances. He just wants Dream to suffer a kind of pain that’s unimaginable, a kind of pain that no one can even fathom.)

“Wilbur?” Tommy whispers, stepping forward. Wilbur stops glaring at Dream to take a look at his brother. His hair was longer than before, more unruly. He’s definitely taller and thinner, and he stares at the dark circles, the scar across his nose and down his cheek. The nervousness was never there before, either. 

Gods, the things that Dream did to him. 

_ (Oh, gods, what have I done?) _

He swallows, pushing the deep fucking  _ hatred  _ aside. “Hey, Toms.” He flinches at the broken vowels, and licks his dry lips. He wants to apologize, and he knows that Tommy would accept, but it shouldn’t be that easy. Wilbur should have to get on his knees and beg, plead, cut off an arm or a leg for his forgiveness, but he knows Tommy, he knows how he’s brazen and always moving, he can’t hold grudges - not because he doesn’t want revenge, but because he doesn’t stick around for long.

(He and Phil were always too similar.)

He barely has time to prepare himself before Tommy dives in for a hug, shoving himself past the altar between them and throwing himself at Wilbur. Static fills his blood vessels, and he wants to jerk away from the embrace at the same time of wanting to lean himself further into it. Tommy sobs into his shoulder, quiet,  _ silent.  _ He grapples at his new limbs like he’s going to fade away again, and it tugs at his heart painfully. The static fades, seeping out of his hands - and when that feeling ends, Wilbur realizes something is very,  _ very  _ wrong.

_ Tommy’s cold.  _

If it were anyone else he wouldn’t notice a difference, he wouldn’t have to point it out - but he’s hugged Tommy way too many times to not know what they feel like. The kid runs as hot as a fucking furnace, nothing changed that (back in Pogtopia’s cavern - a place that he doesn’t like to think about and wishes to have wiped from his memory completely - it was always cold, that time spent there being falltime, when everything was cooling down anyway. Tommy would even say that he  _ wasn’t that cold,  _ even if Wilbur himself was shivering in two or three layers. He would always force him to wear his coat, before- before he lost his mind. Before he stopped caring.) 

But that familiar warmth was gone; Wilbur couldn’t feel anything besides the chill in the room, and the pressure of the hug instead of the temperature. He was borderline horrified at the realization, freezing up - Tommy steps back from the hug as if he was burned. He looks like he’s about to cry.

“Wil, I-” Tommy sniffs, crossing his arms as if to shrink, to fold in on himself. Wilbur hates it. He reaches for his brother and pulls him close, back into another hug. He shuts his eyes - away from the unsettling cold, away from everyone else staring at him. If he tries hard enough, he can imagine the heat’s still there, that nothing changed and they’re still the boys they were, that they all were. (When it was just the drug van, an escapade into unknown lands - maybe even further, when it was just the four of them; Wilbur, Tubbo, Tommy, and an infant Fundy, running away from home and starting life anew.)

He tucks his face into Tommy’s shoulder and almost starts crying himself- the smell of gunpowder and apples flood his senses, with the metallic tang of gold. Wilbur glances at Tubbo, standing in front of him, and waves the boy over. He’s added to the space between his arms, leaning on his right side. “Hey, Wilbur,” he says, wet and muffled into his coat’s fox-fur lining. Tommy shudders, coughing out dry sobs, refusing the tears to fall. They are both horribly, painfully cold.

From a distance, someone clears their throat. “As much as I’d love to stay and watch this-  _ touching reunion,”  _ Dream says, bitter and chipped at the edges. “I believe my stay is long overdue. Sam, take me back.”

Wilbur pulls himself away from his embrace, eyebrow ticking in annoyance, but Tommy’s the first to speak. “He’s not a fuckin’ animal,” he says shakily. “You can’t jus’ order him around like that.” The creeper-hybrid takes a look at Tommy with something like gratefulness in his dark eyes. He nods, and takes Dream by the handcuffs.

“Let’s go,” he says lowly, escorting Dream out of the chamber in silence. The chains rattling behind them echo and echo and echo, until they’re gone, and the only sound left is breathing and a leak in the stone, water dripping. 

Wilbur takes a step back and looks around, before his gaze lands on Phil. The man is unusually frail and small, indeed - he looks almost more bone than skin, but he smiles nonetheless, even just a bit dimmer. “Hey, Wil. I- my son.” The avian steps forward for a hug, and Wilbur steps away, almost appalled by the idea that Phil would want to even  _ see  _ him again (Taken aback by the attempt, the last time Phil had hugged him was on the day that he died, and before that - when he was eight years old and left alone for the first time. Missed birthdays, empty cupboards, and a gravestone in their yard with  _ loving mother  _ carved into it). Tommy tenses beside him - Tubbo just looks mournful.

He sniffs defensively and crosses his arms. “Phil? I think- I think he’d be better off with us, for now. Get him situated, y’know? It’s- it’s his decision whether he wants to see you or not. Give him time, yeah?”

At the same time of feeling like he can speak for himself - he’s done it before, he can still do it (he’d always been too loud, too opinionated,  _ too aggressive)  _ \- Wilbur prefers that Tubbo spoke to Phil. He doesn’t think that he can do it just yet. 

He can see as the shock of anger reaches his father, then the confusion, then the grief. Phil accepts the offer (order, demand, force) with a resolved nod and turns back to Technoblade and Ranboo, who are seething and cowering respectively. 

A wave of fatigue suddenly washes over Wilbur, so heavy that he almost collapses. He leans against Tommy’s sturdy shoulders - sturdy, but too skinny, he’s always been sickly thin, he guesses Tommy got it from him - and feels Tubbo’s shaking hands grab for his sleeve. The stone walls are uninviting and cold.

“I want to go home,” he whispers. Tommy smiles, and it’s a sad thing. 

“Sure thing, big man. We’ll take you home.”

The ride is somber and quiet. Tubbo and Tommy lead their horses, trudging through the path. This forest is new to Wilbur, and the trails look fresh. Evening creeps close with the sunset, but clouds cover most of the sky anyway. “It looks like it’s going to rain,” Tubbo says absentmindedly. Wilbur shivers in his coat and stays silent. He leans into Tommy in front of him, wishing for more warmth, but the boy stiffens his back under the touch, and he thinks it’s best to back away. 

They seem to travel for hours until the path they’re on seems more lived-in and used. By the time they reach spruce fencing and signs that point to Snowchester, it’s already nightfall. Amber lights in the distance speak of something homely and inviting. There’s still ice and snow lining the shore, and the crops are dead in their farmed earth. It smells like seasalt. 

The group of three hop off of the pair of horses. Wilbur stands idly by as his brothers bring them into a shed to tie off their leads. Watching his breath fog in the air is surreal, like he’s not in his body, it’s not his body that’s breathing. He feels oddly detached from reality. 

(In the back of his mind, a thought pops in - this was how it felt almost half a year ago. When he started to get the idea that nothing mattered, no one mattered. It’s funny how everything that comes around, goes around, in some form or another. Maybe that feeling never went away in the first place. Maybe it lingered - festered in his bones, lodged into his sternum. Infecting every stream of blood in his body. Or maybe he’s always been like this, and had stopped hiding it.

Fundy called him a heartless bastard before he died. Wilbur agreed.)

The crunch of iced-over grass is what brings him back - he physically jolts and bares his teeth in a snarl. He’s met face-to-face with Tubbo, whose reserved and calm stare settles him back down. Wilbur feels the painful knot in his stiffened shoulders relax to a dull simmer. The phantom pains of the burns along his arms are humming under his skin.

(it was never meant to be)

Tommy clears his throat from behind Tubbo. “You okay, Wil?”

He blinks. “Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks, on instinct. Tubbo wilts, frowning - Tommy keeps a carefully, uncharacteristically, blank expression. He feels as if he’s under a microscope.

“Let’s go inside,” Tubbo decides. The silence rings in Wilbur’s head, echoes and echoes and echoes. It rattles his teeth and makes him want to vomit.  _ I’ve said something wrong.  _ As they’re walking, he accidentally brushes over Tommy’s shoulder - the boy flinches away as if he’d been burned.  _ I’ve said something wrong.  _

It’s not any less cold inside the cabin as it was outside - but it’s nostalgic and homey. The stuff by the far wall is all covered in gray sheets, like large, looming ghosts - but everything else looks similar to how a house ought to look. Winding staircases frame the lower floor, with tables and chairs, a sofa in the corner. The upper floor is blocked by railing - he can’t see anything that’s up there.

“We have a spare room upstairs you can use,” Tubbo says, taking off his coat and hanging it on a hook by the doors. The green sweater underneath is torn and stained in places. “Or you can stay on the couch down here. It gets a bit cold on the main floor at night, though.”

Wilbur feels out of place; he musters up a smile, but it feels more like a grimace. “Thanks, Tubbo.”

He turns back and smiles. “Of course, of course!” The end of his words dissolves into a yawn, and he shakes his head, smiling. “I’m actually gonna head to bed now, it’s been a… longer day than usual. Goodnight!”

Tubbo’s farewell seemed very forced and quick, but before the suspicion sneaks itself into Wilbur’s mind, he’s already shot upstairs. He turns to Tommy, who’s staring at him, standing as still as the walls around him. He watches the flash of fear course through his little brother’s eyes, flat, straight terror. He never wants to see it again.

Tommy breathes. “I’m… I’m going to bed too.”

There’s a lump caught in Wilbur’s throat, so he doesn’t say anything back. Tommy stares at him longer, as if expecting more to be said. He breathes again, turning up to the stairs.

“Goodnight, Tommy,” is the only thing Wilbur can get out before Tommy’s all the way up to the second floor. 

He pauses. “‘Night, Wil.” he says, mutely. 

Once Tommy closes his door, it’s almost too quiet. Wilbur doesn’t bother to leave his coat at the door - he doubts that he’ll have much sleep, if at all. The couch in the corner is cushioned and comfortable, but it feels strange to him. 

He lies awake and alone, staring up at the ceiling until he fades into a fitful unconscious - not sleep. It was never sleep.


	2. turns out i can't, but not for the same reasons as before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well this aged poorly lmao  
> tw: anxiety attacks, body dysmorphia, disordered eating

Nothing really comes from his slumber. On a normal day, that is.

Which is why he’s puzzled when he opens his eyes and sees trees instead of the ceiling beams that he’d been expecting. (This wasn’t the first time that he’d woken up somewhere strange- but it’s been a long while since it used to happen frequently, and he’s almost frightened for a moment.) He freezes, blinking up at the sky; a horribly natural gray-blue, like it’s just any normal day and this wasn’t strange, not at all, why would you even think that anything was going amiss? This is pretty much the usual around here-

But it’s been years since he saw this place, and Wilbur is not only frightened, he’s borderline terrified.

The trees are familiar, tall spruce and pine towering over him like giants. The air is stale. It smells like wet earth and rotting wood. There is no sound - no bugs, no birds, nothing besides the wind whistling through leaves. The grass is damp beneath him. He grimaces at the feeling of his clothes against his skin. 

The clouds slide past his eyes slowly, the gray against gray barely-there, invisible. He’s almost reluctant to look at his sides, but to his left is just the normal underbrush of a forest, deep forest greens with blue undertones. To his right is very much the same. His limbs seem to push themselves up and off the ground before he can tell them to, and once he’s standing he stumbles over to a tree to keep his balance. (He’s tired of being weak, tired of feeling too much, tired of feeling too little.)

The disturbed grass where his body had been still has the imprint of his coat, and Wilbur shivers. The bark of the spruce is cold, pine-needles and wood shavings crunch under his feet. Someone’s been here before - there’s a path of tree stumps leading into the forest. That detail is new. 

(In this place, there are no people. There  _ had never been _ people. It had only been him and his own thoughts, and Ghostbur and their own thoughts, and-)

He’s shaken by the sound of other footsteps, nearby. If it weren’t for the panic steeling his feet into the ground, he would’ve ran. His entire body rattles, like the wind is too strong for his fragile bones to handle. Wilbur crouches by the bottom of the tree he stands behind, shaking like a leaf, listening to the steps crunching in the dead grass, listening if they’re getting closer, listening for breathing.

A long silence follows - Wilbur sits awkwardly by the tree, his new heart pounding in his chest like it wants to get out, and his breath being held hostage behind his teeth. The paranoia seeps in through the holes, through the cracks, through the folded fabric of his coat and through the ripped and stitched-over seams.  _ Why am I here? What is here? Who is that? Why am I here? _

(-hands crawling up his arms, pulling him down, down into the core of the earth and down further that that, death was peaceful and chaotic all in one, no rest and eternal sleep, suffocating and freeing, he was drowning in it, the pain, the joy, everything in between-)

_ Why am I here? _

The moment he lets himself exhale, the footsteps resume, and he almost lets a sound go out with it. His hands ache, fingers digging into chipped wood, it feels like they’re grating against razors. 

(-darkness. That’s the first thing he remembers. The dark pit of despair right before him, staring him down, swallowing him whole. On one side is death and on the other is Tommy, Tubbo, Fundy. They wait for him, wait for his decision - will he let go? Will he hold on? He can hear the fireworks in the distance, they’re so close and yet, so far. He can feel the rock and oak under him, yet nothing’s there - he’s floating in the place between what is old and what is new, and he is stuck there. He is stuck there for quite some time.)

He closes his eyes, listening to the footsteps draw nearer.

(In this place, there were no people. It was only him, and his own thoughts. It was only Ghostbur, and their own thoughts. 

And it was only Schlatt, and- whatever he had in his head.)

He opens them.

“Heyo, Wil.”

When he wakes up, it feels like he’s been thrown back, or like he’d been kicked into awareness. His eyes are sore, and everything’s blurry. It’s still dark. It’s raining outside - he can hear the patter of the water on the windows. His arms are crossed over his torso, gripping his coat in a self-hug position on the couch. His legs are cramped; he regrets choosing the sofa over the bed that would probably be more suited to his height. 

For a few minutes, Wilbur sits in the dark and ponders. His eyes stay open up at the ceiling. Cloudy blue light, barely visible in the early morning, paints the room in a navy haze. He wants to go back to sleep, he’s still tired, but the restlessness in his mind, his skin, his soul, prevents him from doing so. (On nights like these, he would read - piles of books a night, leafing through history, fiction and adventure. He’s always been able to immerse himself in knowledge, he’s always been the black sheep of the family, in that sense. Tubbo was dyslexic and Tommy could never sit down long enough to get through a book. He supposes, in that way, Wilbur is most like Phil; but the thought of being anything like his father would send white-hot flares of bubbling anger into his veins. He would rather break an arm than admit the truth.)

In the lingering moments of fuzzy consciousness, he begins to grow tired of lying down. His entire body is uncomfortable, and it is, indeed, a bit cold on the lower level. He shuffles on the cushions trying to find comfort, to no avail. 

Wilbur lies back and sighs into the dark, empty air. Deciding to abandon his attempt at falling back asleep, he carefully stands up on the creaky floorboards, swaying with the blood rushing to his head. His boots are still on from the night before. (And beyond that, they were still on from three months ago.)

He doesn’t know why he stood up, at first. He’s not hungry or thirsty, and he could’ve just sat up on the couch to stretch a bit. Thunder rolls distantly, booming through the cabin- lighting cracks and flashes through the windows. 

Wilbur misses the rain. 

His feet carry him to the front double-doors, and his hands open them for him. The chill of the weather outside leaks into the cabin in delicate tendrils. The ground is frozen and muddy at the same time, which would be gross if it hadn’t been the first time he’d seen it in ages. It’s green and flourishing outside, and the sky is a dark, looming blue. It’s seasalt and wet earth, electric, he can almost feel the promise of lightning on his skin and in his mouth. He stands with the door open for a long minute, overwhelmed by the sensation.

(It makes him wonder about how much he never noticed when he was alive- how desensitized he had been, numb and blind.)

He closes his eyes to the chill, smelling the air deeply, listening to the patterns in the rain and the wind. His first step is tentative, nudging past the door hesitantly, and then is followed by one that is more purposeful and confident. He pulls the door shut behind him with tense fingers so as to not make any noise. 

His hair is already soaked. The fingerless gloves he wears don’t do anything to prevent the cold, and are dampened from the rain, but he pushes the mop of wet curls from his eyes and the fabric is smooth and cool, not coarse and scratching at his face like before. He turns to the sky, mouth gaping open in a silent gasp. 

The first breath that comes out of him is a laugh; a short, stuttered giggle that tears out of him unexpectedly. It grows into a chuckle, then a giddy, victorious cackle- he laughs at the clouds, throwing his arms up in the air and pushing the beanie off his head.

(Death couldn’t keep him forever- he knew that. He was always too stubborn.)

He might be mad, but not in the same way he had been before- insane and deluded, but never again cruel. He laughs up at the sky and tells them,  _ I am not who I once was.  _

(He was always afraid of being the same- being stagnant, being stuck.)

The fresh water is sweet on his tongue, pouring down his skin in rivulets. 

_ “I am alive,”  _ Wilbur whispers to himself, to the empty air, to the sea.  _ “I am alive, I am alive, I am alive.” _

(-He laughs up at the sky and tells them that they were  _ wrong.) _

The ache in his chest (where he had been run through with his own sword, by his own father’s hands-) is a dull one, distant but touching. He presses a hand down to that place and breathes, feeling his chest rise and fall like waves - his heartbeat is strong in his ribs as it echoes, echoes, echoes. 

(Slain and resurrected, burned alive and then reborn from the ashes, he’s only ever been a wingless creature and that’s all he ever will be, but he can feel the weightlessness of flying and it’s closer than it’s ever been-)

His laughing dies down to heavy breathing, and then completely stops. His throat and nose hurt from the cold, his entire outfit is pasted to his body at this point, but this- this is the best that he’s felt in a long time. He coughs into his fist, shivering something violent; it seems like the freeze has caught on to him. It’s gotten lighter outside, but only by a little. The sun hasn’t breached the clouds yet. 

The rain has somehow become harsher, too. It pounds into his raw skin, lashing out on the bruising along his back and scraping his uncovered face. His boots are almost sucked into the mud on his way back to the cabin, his footsteps are washed away when he reaches the door. It seems heavier than when he went outside.

Wilbur leans himself into the wall, pressing his forehead into the wood and sighing contentedly. 

“Wilbur?”

He freezes, staring ahead and kicking himself before turning to Tommy. He stands at the bottom of the stairwell and he looks like he just got out of bed. The younger of the two is silent, staring at the other, who is quietly dripping all over the front door’s rug. His eyes are laced with suspicion and caution. “What are you doin’ up?”

Wilbur swallows. “Wanted to feel the rain. I missed it.” His throat was dry.

Tommy narrows his eyes to a pinprick glare, scrutinizing Wilbur’s stick-straight, shivering form. After a second, he heaves a huff out of his nose. “You can take a shower to warm up, if you want. Dunno if there are any clothes we have that’ll fit you. I’ll ask Tubbo to look around.” The blond swings himself down to the floor and paces to the makeshift kitchen. His socked feet don’t make any noise (stepping toe-first, carefully, like he’d been taught- like he’d taught himself to do, to be quiet, to be  _ unseen).  _ “Take your shoes off on the rug, we don’t want any mud tracks up the stairs. Down the center hallway, to the left- that’s the bathroom. Call if you need anything.”

The gruffness in his voice is new, Wilbur thinks, as he shucks off his boots and tries to avoid stepping in the puddles of water he was making with his own socked feet. Tommy used to be full of life and boundless energy - from what Wilbur’s seen, either he’s hiding it from him, or it just isn’t there anymore. He sincerely hopes it’s the first.

He hops up the stairs with a bit more energy in his step. The rain had cleared his mind a bit, it was refreshing, oddly enough. It’s hard to move swiftly in wet clothes. The stairs are lined with windows; they rumble and rattle in their hinges when it thunders outside. 

(He can tell that Tubbo built this cabin, from the architecture and the materials that had been used. It’s not made of cobblestone - Tommy would’ve had a field day if Tubbo let him do it instead. But the older of the two had always been the more nostalgic, and the design of the cabin was too much like their childhood home to be a coincidence. He’s grateful that they both have happy memories of the place, even if Wilbur doesn’t.)

The bathroom is plain, but not entirely stark white - the walls are a pale green, and the tiles are cream-colored. There’s a large poster of Tommy’s close-up face on the other side of the door, that stares directly at the shower. He feels himself deadpan at the image. 

Wilbur slips out of his coat and cringes at the wet  _ plop  _ it makes on the floor. His movements are stiff and uncoordinated, but he reaches the shower to turn it on. The handle yields with a screech before the water starts to flow. 

His sweater is the first to be taken off after his coat. He peels it off like snake skin, almost suffocating in the tight-knit yarn and yanking it completely off his head. All that’s left on his torso is a thin undershirt, gashes torn into the fabric as if he’d tried to claw himself out of his own body. (He knows that he had done that very thing before - when he couldn’t sleep for the third day and he started seeing things, visions of blood and gunpowder keeping him awake even if he was exhausted, or when the hunger stopped chewing at his gut and started eating, biting, fighting with tooth and nail to keep the hole in his stomach shut with something other than his own bile and acid-)

His fingers freeze at the hem of the shirt, hesitant. Wilbur doesn’t want to see what’s under there. He’s not sure if  _ anyone  _ would. 

Instead of lingering, he rips off the article of clothing in one jerking movement. It lands somewhere beneath him. He focuses on the sound of the running water instead, it drowns out the blood in his ears and the whine that follows the shirt’s absence. He’s still so cold.

Wilbur shuts his eyes as he takes the rest of his clothing off, piling it on the pale tile flooring unceremoniously. The air tickles his bare skin, making him shiver despite the steam billowing out from over the shower curtain. He clasps his arms over his chest, standing up straight and accidentally turning to the mirror.

He doesn’t need to see to know what it looks like. It still shocks him anyway. The fogged-over glass doesn’t do much to cover what damage had been done - he stares at his blurry reflection like it’s a stranger.

It  _ is _ a stranger. He hasn’t seen himself in quite some time- it’s been six months since he looked at himself in the mirror, and four since he forgot what his reflection looked like.

He’s thin, bone-thin - like a strong wind could topple him over. Any muscle that he had when he was alive is gone, replaced by gaps, curves where there shouldn’t be, ribs where they shouldn’t be visible. He can’t see too well in the unfocused mirror, but a divot between the beginning of his ribcage and his hips is as clear as day, and hadn’t been there before. (Had it, though? In his last living days, he doesn’t remember taking care of himself the way a person ought to- remembers neglecting to bandage wounds, remembers spraining his ankle on the jagged paths of the cavern only to never set it right, remembers putting off dinner later, later, later, until it was the next day and he started putting off breakfast, too.)

But what catches his attention the most, his horror and fascination, is the scar laid in the center of his chest. It’s visible even in the misty glass, gaping and red and raw. The healed-over skin is fragile and paper-thin, spiderwebbed with small stretch marks. Wilbur stares down at it like it’s another limb growing out of his chest. He lifts a hand to trace over the vague shape, pressing down to feel the ache. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and hesitates before pulling himself away from the mirror and to the shower.

_ (he’s still so cold, he shouldn’t be, he shouldn’t be cold when the water is hot enough to make the bathroom into a sauna-) _

His first step into the shower doesn’t really change anything - he’s still cold and wet, just even more so, and he shakes his head in astonishment.  _ Maybe they’ve run out of hot water,  _ he thinks.  _ (as if he chose not to see the steam from over the curtain, as if he didn’t just look at himself in a fogged mirror, as if he was just fucking blind-) _

The shower curtain is slid shut with a rattle, and he leans over to turn the hot water up. The spray stings his eyes and drips between strands of hair. All the faucet does is increase in pressure.  _ (overwhelming and underwhelming, everything and nothing, all at once-) _

He chews at his lip and blinks frustration out of his mind  _ (the dull roar behind his eyes, the build up of tears, he knows what’s coming but he doesn’t want it, doesn’t want it, doesn’t want it-)  _ trying to turn the faucet to its hottest setting, but he feels nothing  _ (everything)  _ his skin is red and flaming without the heat, burning without the fire  _ (everything)  _ and the first tears that fall are against his will, he barely notices, he tastes salt and hears the water and feels-

(He’s so cold.)

_ (Everything- he doesn’t want it.) _

Nothing. 

Nothing except choking on a closed throat. He tries to breathe - he really does, he’s trying - but the air just tastes like blood and gunpowder- he blinks and his father- Phil is running him through with his own sword- this stranger is hugging him and he coughs out globs of red on his green robes, he wants to apologize but everything’s dark and cold- he wants to stay awake but he’s cold- there’s nothing but the pit pulling him by his legs and it’s cold.

He tries to breathe, but he sobs instead, shuddering and falling to the floor of the shower. Wilbur sits at the bottom of the spray, letting the freeze wash over him. He bites down on the meat of his palm to stop the sounds from coming out. He doesn’t want to disturb Tommy or Tubbo, he doesn’t want to-  _ he doesn’t want it. _

_ He doesn’t want it. _

(He’s so cold.)


End file.
